Who we are

What is Varia?

Varia is a member-based collective that maintains a ground floor space at Gouwstraat 3, Charlois Rotterdam, since 2017.

Together we experiment with creating and maintaining physical and digital infrastructures needed for collective, cultural work. This involves sharing resources amongst our network by hosting different groups in the space we rent, self-hosting digital services and developing digital tools. Alongside this, Varia members organise a wide range of activities and events based around their various interests.

Our organisational models, including decision-making processes, mediation, conflict resolution, collective administration, maintenance and research, are intricately reflected in our infrastructures, public programme and attitude towards being and working with one another.

We try to adapt social organisational models to our tools and administrative practices. Our collective stance opposes Big Tech; we do not use GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft) services nor infrastructure, instead preferring to use and develop F/LOSS (Free/Libre and Open-Source Software).

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Current members

Previous members

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Motivations

Here in Varia’s Motivations we try to put into words; why we are doing what we do, and what holds us together to do it collectively. We are always working towards all of this, and we are always reaching further, or in a different direction.

We aim to support ourselves, and support others, by building and maintaining a solidarity network. We support one another by sharing tools, resources, funding opportunities and projects. We collaborate, cooperate, sometimes challenge one another and annoy each other. We also very much value one anothers thoughts, skills and dreams, which we try to respect and tend to.

We support our locality by making our physical space available to groups that need it to organise gatherings or events. We support our wider network by collaborating with other artists, musicians, designers, technologists, theorists, activists and other practitioners that share similar motivations to Varia’s and providing them with space and resources.

We strive for ethical working conditions. We do this by having a fixed hourly fee for both members and non-members, regardless of the work performed. We give attention to protocols for how we work together, and trainings to develop how we communicate. We try to share the internal work we do; collective protocols, collaboration agreements, code of conduct (CoC) - as good practices for careful self-organisation.

We explicitly engage with ethical and less extractive technologies in their various forms. Varia favours, without idealising, Free/Libre and Open-Source Software (F/LOSS), free culture, open standards, lowtech and DIY/DIWO culture, because they allow users to understand the mechanisms behind their tools. With these approaches we can have more joyful agency around how we work, and we can better grasp the impact of the technologies we use. We do not aim for an ideal, optimised approach, instead finding pleasure in the seamful imperfections of our tools. We seek to understand the world through looking closely at technical objects and technological entanglements, and find comrades and peers in the process.

In this way, we are very much invested in collective learning, as a group and with participants of our public programme. Learning together, we can keep trying to demystify complexities of the multitude of technologies that govern our lives.

We are collectively against systems and technologies that enable and perpetuate surveillance and control, genocide, oppression, perpetuate capitalist and colonialist attitudes, extract and harm.

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